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Home  »  Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Cicely Fox-Smith (1882–1954)

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By The Foremost Trail (1900). I. The Foremost Trail

Cicely Fox-Smith (1882–1954)

WE’VE drunk our fill of pleasure,

Of town-bred ease and mirth;

Our hearts are fain to wander

The utmost ends of earth.

The oft-sung songs ring hollow;

The well-known ways grow stale;

We’re off to lead the vanguard,—

To tread the Foremost Trail!

It’s oh to leave behind us

The Railhead of the Past,

To roam, where none have trodden,

Thro’ hopeful lands and vast!

The fruitless feast is over;

The lamplight’s glare grows pale;

And “Outward ho!”’s the watchword,—

To tread the Foremost Trail!

O some may drive to eastward,

Stem on into the day,

And some steer out to westward,

Where sunset skies grow grey.

It’s “hey! the flowing furrow

And ho! the swelling sail!”

We’re outward bound for action—

To tread the Foremost Trail!